9 Easy Steps to Boost Holiday Traffic to Your Website

The holiday season is an important time for businesses of all niches. If you’re a business owner with a website, you should absolutely take advantage of the holiday traffic to boost your revenue.

Online retail sales in the U.S. alone surged to nearly $254 billion in the holiday season of 2023. During this time, shoppers are actively searching for gifts and the best deals, so it’s crucial to have a strategy in place to capture this influx of potential customers. 

However, this surge in traffic also comes with a set of challenges like website crashes and slowdowns. 

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! We’ll guide you through easy steps to help increase holiday traffic to your website, including tips and tricks to ensure your site is ready for the surge. 

Feeling the holiday rush already? Then let’s get started!

Step 1: Optimize Your Website’s User Experience

During the holidays, online traffic surges significantly as more users visit websites to shop, browse, and engage with content. Black Friday weekend is the busiest shopping day of the holiday season.

If your website loads slowly, it can lead to higher bounce rates as users abandon the site in frustration. According to research, 40% of visitors tend to leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load, especially during time-sensitive shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

So first, you need to check your website’s speed on the front end.

Tools to Check Your Website’s Speed

There are several tools available that can help you measure your website’s performance and identify areas for improvement:

• Google PageSpeed Insights – This tool provides a comprehensive analysis of your website’s speed and offers suggestions for improving load times.
• GTmetrix – Offers detailed insights into how your site is performing and suggests optimizations to improve speed.
• Pingdom – Allows you to monitor site performance and uptime from multiple global locations, providing real-time feedback on speed.​

Tips and Tricks to Help Your Site Load Faster

1. Compress your images to avoid slow load times. You can drastically reduce the file sizes of your images without losing quality by using tools like TinyPNG or image optimization plugins like Smush to make this process easy.
2. Use caching. This process stores copies of your website’s pages so they load faster for returning visitors. You can use tools like W3 Total Cache.
3. Ensure your website’s code is clean and efficient. Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML can help reduce the amount of data that needs to be loaded. Implement asynchronous loading to prioritize key elements of the page.

Mobile-Friendly Website

It is also important to note that during the holiday season, a large portion of online shopping and browsing is done using mobile phones. Or even in general, over 58% of global website traffic comes from mobile users, and many people prefer shopping on mobile and apps. 

A poor mobile experience can lead to potential cart abandonment. What’s worse is they can go to a competitor’s store, especially when they are in a rush to take advantage of holiday deals​.

So, ensuring your website performs well on mobile devices can help increase your website’s traffic and reduce bounce rates from your website.

Tips on How to Optimize Your Website for Mobile Use

1. Use a mobile-friendly theme that automatically adjusts the layout based on the device’s screen size. Many free and paid WordPress themes are designed with mobile users in mind.
2. Test your site’s mobile friendliness using tools like Bing’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check how well your website performs on mobile devices.
3. Mobile users should be able to navigate your site easily. Use a streamlined menu system, like a hamburger menu, to keep things simple and ensure users can find what they need quickly.
4. Using plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache can help store static versions of your site, making it load faster.
5. Enable AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to make your pages load faster on mobile devices. 
6. If your site has contact or signup forms, ensure they are mobile-friendly. You can use plugins like WPForms to create forms that adjust to different screen sizes.

Step 2: Leverage SEO and Holiday-Specific Keywords

Holiday-specific keywords are search terms that people use when they’re looking for products, services, or information tied to a particular holiday or festive event. 

For example, terms like Christmas gift ideas, Black Friday deals, or Valentine’s Day flowers are popular around those holidays. These keywords experience a surge in search volume as people prepare for holiday shopping or event planning. 

You can optimize your website with these keywords. This way, you can attract more visitors and boost your chances of ranking higher in search results during high-traffic holiday periods​.

How to Identify Holiday-Related Keywords

1. Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush. You can input broad terms like “Christmas” and receive suggestions for specific phrases with high search volumes.
2. Check what keywords your competitors are using during the holiday season. This can give you insight into effective phrases that you might have overlooked.​
3. Tools like Google Trends allow you to track when certain keywords spike in popularity. This helps you time your content perfectly, focusing on specific holidays like Halloween in October or Mother’s Day in May​.

Update Your On-Page SEO

It’s also good to incorporate holiday keywords into your titles, meta descriptions, and content. By doing so, you’re signaling to search engines that your page is relevant to people searching for holiday-related goods and services.

If you already have old blog posts or product pages, refreshing them with seasonal keywords can give them a boost. Plus, search engines give priority to pages that are both relevant and recently updated.

Step 3: Create Holiday-Themed Content

It’s not enough to simply update your old content by injecting holiday-related keywords into it. The best thing that you can do is to create specific holiday-themed content to be published on your website.

Holiday-themed content also enhances brand engagement by creating a festive atmosphere that resonates with your audience. It can spark excitement, drive sales, and encourage users to share your content. This helps you reach a wider audience during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year​.

Ideas for Holiday-Themed Content

• Gift Guides: Create curated lists such as “Top 10 Gifts for Moms” or “Unique Christmas Gifts Under $50.” These guides help shoppers find what they need easily, and you can feature your own products or link to affiliate items​.
• Holiday Recipes or DIY Ideas: Share festive recipes, DIY decoration guides, or holiday crafts.
• Behind-the-Scenes Content: Share how your business is preparing for the holidays. Whether it’s decorating your office or showcasing your seasonal products, this type of content creates a personal connection with your audience.​
• Holiday-Themed Videos: Create short videos featuring holiday greetings, product demos, or customer testimonials that showcase the festive spirit.
• Interactive Content: Run holiday-themed contests, quizzes, or polls that encourage user participation.

Step 4: Email Marketing for the Holidays

Holiday-themed email campaigns are important because they help you connect with your audience. But with many businesses sending promotions during the holiday season, having a well-planned email campaign that helps you stand out to your audience is a must.

How often should you send emails during the holidays?

To avoid overwhelming your subscribers, balance is key. Sending 1-2 emails per week during the holidays typically works well. Too many emails can lead to frustration and increase the chances of people unsubscribing. 

However, you can send more frequent emails (like daily) during key periods such as Black Friday or the week leading up to Christmas. Always monitor open rates and unsubscribe trends to adjust your frequency accordingly.

Planning a holiday email campaign

1. Start Early: Begin planning your campaign at least a month or two in advance. This gives you enough time to create and test your content​.
2. Segment Your Audience: Group your email list based on customer behaviors, interests, or purchase history. This allows you to send more personalized and relevant content, which leads to better engagement.
3. Create Engaging Content: Use holiday-themed subject lines, festive designs, and strong calls to action. Incorporate seasonal imagery, and be clear about promotions or deadlines (e.g., shipping cutoffs). Including countdown timers or exclusive offers in your email can create urgency.
4. Test and Optimize: Use A/B testing to find the best-performing subject lines, layouts, and content. Continuously review the performance of your emails and make adjustments to improve results.

Step 5. Utilize Social Media and Paid Advertising

During the holiday season, using social media and paid advertising can help you reach a large audience, create hype, and increase your sales.

Start with organic social media posts. Create engaging holiday-themed content like gift ideas, product highlights, or seasonal promotions.

You can also run paid social media ads. These ads allow you to retarget people who have visited your website, used your app, or engaged with your social posts. During the holidays, offering limited-time discounts or special deals in your ads is a great way to encourage purchases. 

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram let you target specific audiences to ensure your promotions reach the right people.

To get the best results, use a combination of organic posts to engage your audience and paid ads to drive traffic and boost sales.

Best Practices for Creating Holiday-Themed Posts and Stories

• Create Festive Visuals: Use holiday-specific imagery, colors, and themes that align with the season. For instance, you can post photos of your products in a festive setting or share behind-the-scenes holiday preparations​.
• Use Holiday Hashtags: Including popular holiday hashtags like #HolidayDeals or #GiftGuide helps increase visibility.
• Time Your Posts Well: Schedule your holiday posts strategically. Posting too early or too late may miss the holiday shopping window. Begin your campaign about a month in advance and ramp up your efforts as the holidays approach​.

Step 6: Use Promotions, Giveaways, and Discounts

Who doesn’t like free or discounted items when shopping? I bet everyone does.

Hosting giveaways and contests during the holidays is a great way to engage your audience and increase your brand’s visibility. People are more likely to participate during this festive season, especially if the prizes match the holiday spirit.

For example, you can ask participants to enter by providing their email or sharing your post. This helps you grow your email list and reach more people, especially as they search for deals and prizes during the holidays.

Tools for Managing Giveaways:

• ShortStack: Useful for building viral contests and collecting leads without the need for coding skills.
• Woobox: Great for managing giveaways across multiple platforms.
• Gleam: Makes it easy to add different entry options like social media follows or email sign-ups.

Use Scarcity Marketing 

Scarcity marketing drives urgency by making people feel like they might miss out on something valuable. Limited-time offers and prizes motivate customers to act quickly. During the holidays, using strategies like countdown timers and flash sales encourages fast purchasing decisions.

You can also apply this approach to giveaways by setting strict entry deadlines. Additionally, offering time-limited discounts can further compel customers to take action before the opportunity passes.

Step 7: Strengthen Your Site’s Infrastructure

You’re trying your best to boost your website’s holiday traffic, but is your site’s infrastructure ready to handle them?

If your hosting plan is not equipped to handle these traffic surges, it can lead to slow loading times or even website crashes.

Upgrading your hosting plan ensures that your website can manage the increased demand, offering faster performance and a smoother user experience​. Scalable hosting, like the plans offered by GreenGeeks, allows your website to dynamically increase resources, such as bandwidth and processing power, as traffic rises.

Step 8: Use Analytics to Track and Optimize Results

Monitoring your website’s traffic is crucial because it helps you see how visitors engage with your site and shows if your marketing efforts are working. 

Tools like Google Analytics can track key data such as where your traffic is coming from, how many visitors are converting into customers, and how quickly people leave your site. This data helps you identify which parts of your site and campaigns are performing well and which areas need improvement.

Additionally, evaluating your holiday marketing strategies allows you to improve for the next year.

Step 9: Come up With a Post-Holiday Content Strategy

After the holiday rush, it’s important to keep your audience engaged and maintain momentum. Here are a few strategies to consider:

1. Post-Holiday Sales and Promotions: Encourage customers to take advantage of clearance sales or discounts on leftover holiday inventory.
2. Thank You Campaigns: Show appreciation to your customers for their support during the holidays by sending personalized thank-you emails or social media posts.
3. Customer Feedback and Reviews: Encourage customers to leave reviews or feedback about their holiday purchases. This can help build trust and provide valuable insights for improving your business.

Keep Holiday Content Live Year-Round

People may still search for holiday-related items or information after the season ends. If your content is readily available and optimized, you can continue attracting visitors with it.

Benefits of Keeping Seasonal Content Accessible

• Continuous Traffic: Seasonal content, like holiday guides or recipes, stays relevant and can bring in visitors throughout the year, especially as people start planning early for future holidays.
• Improved Search Rankings: Search engines keep indexing your holiday content, which can improve its ranking over time. Updating and reusing the content helps boost its visibility.
• Efficient Content Creation: Instead of making new content every year, you can simply update your existing seasonal posts with fresh information, making the process quicker and easier.

FAQs About Boosting Holiday Traffic to Your Website

Get Ready for a Holiday Rush Like Never Before

Taking early steps to optimize your website for holiday traffic will help your business succeed during this important time. The sooner you start, the better you’ll be at turning visitors into customers and achieving long-term success.

Make sure to focus on key areas like improving your website’s user experience, creating holiday-themed content, using the right keywords, and monitoring your traffic. It’s also crucial to prepare for a big surge in traffic by ensuring your website can handle it with a reliable, scalable hosting plan, such as GreenGeeks.

Are you ready for the holiday rush? Start applying these steps now to boost your traffic and sales for the holidays. Time to make that list and check it twice!